I've applied for the beginner level of the sisterhood gratitude badge. I've returned the Book of Delights to the library while I wait for my personal copy to arrive. Yet this habit has subtly zhuzh'ed up my life, so I'd like to see how long I can keep at it without the extrinsic motivation...
2/14 Easter eggs
Many an uninspired homeschool day (including this one) has been saved by cutting the assignments into single questions, throwing in a couple fun adventures (i.e. making pokemon-inspired bath bombs for Aunt Judy's birthday), stuffing them into plastic easter eggs and hiding them around the house.
2/15 Kai
This is where gratitude and delight journaling diverge. Today is Kai's last day. She had another Addisonian crisis. It was probably my fault-- I didn't realize I could double her monthly steroid and then we embarked on 2 sleep overnight weekends with a petsitter that were probably pretty stressful for her. "Kai needs help." My daughter remarked in a departure from her normal morning wakeup circuit. And so I scooped her up from her awkward spot in front of the dog door and carried her outside to potty and watched her never-super-solid legs collapse underneath her into her own urine. And then I toweled her up and took her to the emergency vet and ran the panels and listened to her keening in the back office for 5 hours, nearly doubled over with shark week cramps, dizzy with hunger, and groggy from Nyquil. Caucusing my friends on text over what they would do in my spot. Then landed on top her up with early percorten, take her home, keep her comfortable, say good bye, and eventually arrived at consensus with hubby that Dr. Julie would come at 7 for the last sleep since none of the interventions seemed to have made her even just lethargically at ease. And now here I am at her side with the laptop, reflecting on how grateful I am to have known Kai. She is the friend I have stayed close with the longest in my life. Almost 14 years and 10 months. I adopted her as soon as I had secured an employment situation at an office that allowed dogs. I transported her cross country in my carryon, watching in dismay as the increasingly insistent whimpers turned into a tinkle in her mesh bag. Foreshadowing of parenthood. At work, she spawned a boom of other Klee Kai adoptions, she was that cute. So cute dev teams insinuated she was distracting them from shipping their games on time. Now she is a latch klee kai, howling through the paper thin walls of the apartment complex I have a draconian long term rental agreement with. My door is plastered with "dog noise.doc" threats to silence my dog or risk eviction. This catalyzes a friendship with my sympathetic neighbors to one side. It catalyzes a search for a house with a yard at what turned out to be the very bottom of the housing market and here we are happy Steamstead owners. She's my wing dog, the excuse to go camping with a handy co-worker who unwittingly takes us camping in freshly fallen snow and shoves her in the bottom of his sleeping padless sleep system to avoid perishing from hypothermia. Future hubby material. She instigates the expansion of our pack with a second Klee Kai and we can now savor how unusually social she is for the breed, introducing herself to every picnic'er on dog beach so she can canvas for corn tortilla chips. The crippling fear she has of fireworks until her hearing and vision fade to the point of obliviousness to them. The discovery she had a disease which could be managed and her catapault from a scrawny 8 lb dog to over 20 lbs. The patience with which she endured our human pup and how diligently she would follow her around, cleaning up spilled milk and Cheerios despite preferring the peace, quiet, and less divided adoration of single dog life. Even in these last days, I feel like she is nudging me toward gifts I don't think I deserve-- an excuse to clear the calendar and be unproductive, to cry, to ask for support from my friends and family. Driving back from the urgent care with the windows cracked so she could smell the smells, one hand buried in her solid body and implausibly warm fur. How did she keep it so puppy soft for her entire life? Thank you, Kai, you have made my life so rich.
2/16 wet paw prints on the running path at dawn
I got up and went for a run, the first workout I've taken a crack at in what feels like ages. Beautiful orangey red runrise glimpsed only in my periphery because my route was N-S. Tuft of Kai fur stuffed in my pocket I had come across in the morning cat feed. Did Panda and Kai have an agreement? Panda is more present and communicative, it seems. The path is near empty, but every once in a while, a small dog that went before collected some grass dew on its feet and then wandered back onto the path making Kai-scale paw prints and I feel she's leading the way. Showing me she would want me to find ways to be healthy and see the world even though hers closed in over her later years.
2/17 loquat walks with Rho
In making a decision about Kai, I went through a dog quality of life questionnaire. It left me wondering how much she had left to look forward to. Maybe meals? Maybe a peaceful hang on the front porch. Rho has so much more of a base fitness level to wring joy out of life. He can see, hear, jump up on couches and cuddle. He brings toys to cheer me up when I'm crying or when I've come home from an errand. I'm trying to pay it forward by taking him on morning walks. Today we talked a bit to our SW corner neighbor. We saw lots of him when my daughter was learning to walk and loving picking his dandelions or popping the sidewalk loquats that dropped from his tree. Now she gets her exercise in carefully orchestrated sports events. I hope Rho and I see more of him, learn his name.
2/18 saalt
One of the TCT regrets was it landed on shark week and backpackers in the know felt that silicone cups were the most lightweight, leave no trace option. Having 2 misadventures long ago with these, I wasn't about to make a third mistake thinking things might be different with post-partum plumbing. But I did research via a quiz about whether another model might be more comfortable and can say on cycle 2 using it, this one rocks. I hadn't appreciated how much "cleaner" the situation could be, beyond even what was possible with tampons and swimming, running, biking have been unproblematic.
2/19 Anna in bloom
I thought Boska, a fellow master gardener, was being effusive when she gushed about her Anna apple. Gardeners seem to think everything home grown is glorious and more flavorful than those bland store-bought cousins. When I later planted a line of 4 varieties of apple including an Anna, I began to suspect her praise was more of an understatement. This apple tree bears heavily and year round, shaming the other 3 soldiers on its line. I'm excited to see it already blooming, the best rose cousin bouquet for Valentines day.
2/20 Abundance mind set, (long) running distance good coffee, mySanta Ana app, returning sense of smell...
Skimming Laziness Does Not Exist yesterday, it seems like it has the sickness of comparison (thief of joy) comorbid with the belief that there is a fixed amount of success in the world, not enough to go around. Though I am a student of the world just like you and not the final say on this diagnosis. This scarcity perspective is a weed I need to root out whenever I find it in my own mental garden. I should be like the ironically? hippie Sarah at the apple store in her rose-tinted glasses, tilting towards more optimism and fewer windmills. I just noticed the belief that I need to ration my gratitude items so I will never run out or have duplicates in this merit badging adventure. Scarcity. Let's talk about all of them, the hundreds and thousands of kisses given by the universe, to throw back to Catallus tutoring sessions with Mrs. Jensen, so that people will be confused and not know how many kissed blessings there are! I love that there is a wonderful local coffee shop in which I am a regular that is not too close and yet not too far away. A thirty minute jog and it is the pivot, a place for a restroom break, a flat white (sugar-free memories of honeymooning in Oz), and a sack of the most perfectly ground aromatic Kenyan I can find to revive my sniffer which only now and then is picking up smells coming off several weeks of countering a cold, like those little snowy white flowers that would emerge in the spring melt of Maryland (or was it Minnesota?) childhood. And to jog home in the sun, exchanging small greetings, arriving at the awkward 4 way stop intersection so close to my home where the ugly graffitti has been scrawled on the fence for days but I am always behind a steering wheel and not able to report it. Now, I have time abundance, I have the graffitti app, Pirsig on his motorcycle would be proud. I can even take one more victory lap around the block with my delighted to see me dog and admire how much my SW neighbor's loquat tree has grown back to encroach on the sidewalk and drop carbonously sustainable bubble wrap for the next neighborhood toddler to happen by. Memories of a half decade ago with my daughter.
2/21 Family and cafecito
So happy to see my parents (Grandma Kathy and Grandad Pete) on their way west to their Kauai stomping grounds. The day before, I had run the 4 miles to Kean for good fully leaded coffee and had the chance to make Grand Dad a soup bowl full of it and a half-caf for myself. Suddenly, all problems feel solvable. I'm not sure how I lucked out with such a low-drama, content parents. Hopefully it is heritable.
2/22 Dunes parking, appetite and smells
Able to use the marina parking permit (hubby's boat parking perk) to secure a rockstar parking spot at the bike path trail head rather than praying for a parallel parking spot along the road. Also the not-to-be-discounted easy access to their restrooms. My nose was still running, but I had remembered to ride with a bandana and could start to get whiffs of wet chaparral through the sniffles. What Is that smell? sage? creosote? I think I am becoming naturalized Californian because I love that smell so-- reminiscent of my childhood iguana's terrarium with the heat lamps baking its mulch with just a touch of humidity, of hope. It is amazing how quickly the scrub goes from bleh to lime green with a good soaking rainstorm. And while I've been on the "resfriado" suppressed appetite, I started to feel some hunger pangs 15 or so miles in, so maybe a return of delight in food is in my future.
2/23 Beanbag chairs
2/24 Second Christmas
These are feral cats. I've gotten in the habit of feeding them (first to trap and spay). Now if it gets to far past 6AM they will peer into the window looking for their breakfast. There is something delightful about this rhythm, this inter-species understanding. Yesterday, at dinner, a rogue bottle rocket sailed over our 8' fence and landed perfectly in the compost box I had banked against the side of our house. The plan was to bury previous lead paint as abatement. However, this compost box had just been topped up with about 4" of shredded vet bills and back tax returns. I'm glad we saw it happen and I could scamper out and douse the smoldering bin before it picked up more momentum.
2/23 Beanbag chairs
Sidenote(s)-- Ross Gay (Book of Delights author) has stumbled on my 2/20 abundance conclusion it is antithetical to the spirit of gratitude to hoard grateful ideas for future days in his entry today. The delight of feeling literally on the same page about a subject, particularly with someone whose pop culture references and career are so foreign to my own background. Also grinning at the Google "2 years ago" photo feed recap of daughter and husband spending nearly our whole trip in Kauai jumping into various bodies of water and wondering how the cousins are enjoying an identical itinerary this week, if they have the mermaid gene too. Today, I am reveling in beanbag chairs. They remind me of the hours of "quality time" my brothers and I spent playing video games in the basement, albeit on different systems on different screens, but physically together none the less. Here I am on the couch with my daughter playing one of my favorite games on her Steamdeck. And survivor Rho is lounging in a new wonderful perch husband got for our living room because the ones upstairs in his office/video game room are so popular. I'm thankful he can still get onto furniture to be my shadow, as I reflect bittersweetly on Kai's gradual decline from climbing up for a cuddle, requesting a lift, settling for a close spot on a sunny floor, to favoring her dog bed and the occasional petting breaks as I passed through the room. I think Rho still has a lot of time left. And I'm relishing the future for the beanbag chairs, as they get a little more flat and compacted, topping them up with richly scented compostable packing peanuts from a future Lush cosmetics haul... Although maybe I would prefer to simplify and try using coconut oil as a conditioner instead of Lush's Power product? There is no hurry to decide, I'm enjoying the planning and deliberation.
2/24 Second Christmas
I'm not sure if it is the new light aspect by the window, that it got an extra good watering, or a footnote about changing climate, but my Thanksgiving-Christmas blooming cactus is blooming again!
2/25 Breakfast in Bed
Oh, not for intermittently fasting me, for the kid I just dreamt was in some Cormac McCarthy The Road dystopia, slowly starving to death in the flat expanse of Oklahoma. But at 5:30am she is here, in the flesh, having metabolized several pounds of piñata candy in lieu of meals over the past 36 hours. And it is generally my responsibility as The Morning Person to get out of bed and make her a fortifying breakfast (because I suspect the delicately cookie cuttered cold cut "puppy chow" she packed for herself will be less than filling in the cruel light of school lunch and snack). But instead, hubby, after gradually realizing this is a 30 second microwave job versus a preheat the oven job and that she cannot be plied with a soft pretzel and nutella dipping sauce, hops out of bed to set her up with another dubiously nutrient dense meal... and I can go back to revising that dream road to be less McCarthyish and more Kerouacian.
2/26 Fence cats and dowsed compost
These are feral cats. I've gotten in the habit of feeding them (first to trap and spay). Now if it gets to far past 6AM they will peer into the window looking for their breakfast. There is something delightful about this rhythm, this inter-species understanding. Yesterday, at dinner, a rogue bottle rocket sailed over our 8' fence and landed perfectly in the compost box I had banked against the side of our house. The plan was to bury previous lead paint as abatement. However, this compost box had just been topped up with about 4" of shredded vet bills and back tax returns. I'm glad we saw it happen and I could scamper out and douse the smoldering bin before it picked up more momentum.
2/27 morning marine layer, figgy puddin-out leaves
There is something wonderful about foggy mornings. It gives some assurance my garden isn't scorching, some justification for a cosy cuppa something, and yet I know in this region, it will generally burn off by the time the day it underway, no inconvenience. I also noticed the fig is starting to fill back out, maybe it got the hint from the stone fruit blossoms in the orchard or the streets lined in jacarandas, all in flower. But it also reminds me of the several Quaker gatherings I zoomed in for where they chose to sing hymns and Christmas songs. It hadn't occurred to me how rude the "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" song was until one of these mild-mannered meeters pointed it out with a bit of a renegade sparkle in his eye (as well as I could discern through the screen). Indeed, the equivalent of Trick or Treaters at Christmas.
2/28 dollar store seeds, 4th Wing, Ross's Pride experience
3/1 lazy swap meet days
I may be deliberating cramming triathlon workouts in to avoid the rain tomorrow, but technically, there is nothing mission critical to cross of the list today. Not even yardwork as our prime corner lot fences are festooned with yardsale items it would be awkward to work around. Hubby has taken kiddo to the theme park. Nothing to do but binge read a page turner with a few intermittent breaks to stretch my legs and maybe strike something off the list.
3/2 hyper local workout commutes and heat therapy
The ominous clouds have galvanized my beginning of an orthodox theory: if you spend more total time commuting to + from the venue than doing The Thing, you should seriously reconsider. This has helped in drawing the line with kid activities and combining errands. In this case, it is whether a 20+20 min drive to the beach for a 30 min swim is justified. Should I count the 10-15 mins of wiggling into the wetsuit? Is there a redeeming social impact to seeing my athlete friends? How much chit chat social benefit is really possible during a swim workout? So I squirm into my wetsuit, and take a 10 second commute to the backyard pool, whinge in my head a bit about how all my workouts are treadmills lately-- 90 mins on a stationary bike watching Rajiv dip candles, 60 mins of looping daughter's preschool block 10x while she goes to alumni book club, and now 30 mins with my face in the jet trying to hover at roughly the garage door/spa ledge which I can verify between breaths-- and in 30 minutes, I am done. 40 minutes in a delightfully hot spa husband warmed up for me with daughter happily splashily applying concepts she learned about space (planetarium visit 2 days ago) and water polo. Social benefit. Good use of time.
3/3 Date night tutelage
I am lucky to have a very musically-inclined branch of in laws. Lucky to have them swing by for a visit with my daughter from time to time and somehow manage to get her playing the piano homework she has been avoiding for 3 days, grasp the fundamentals of waltzing, detangle the incipient dreadlocks into a California-perfect blonde blow out, and eschew her mochi + screen wind down for a wholesome story. All while hubby and I are out slurping ramen and Reese's PB cup ice cream.
3/4 Sense of scents
I spent a lot of time yesterday opening little bottles of fragrance from Candle Science and sniffing them. Like a kid with sharpies. But now I know that CS fragrance formulations are currently phthalate free (not sure if they were when I bought them), it seems like a less problematic pleasure. Only a couple weeks ago, I couldn't smell anything with the congestion. Now I can conjure fresh cut grass at the flick of a wrist. (post script: and it is amazing how green our front yard grassish oxalis clover situation is this time of year before it burns to brown. Like it knows St Patrick's day is around the corner)
3/5 Early sign ups and Rain and Iron Flame
I am so excited for a hygge day in with rain in the forecast, recalling the contrast in Kingsolver's book Animal, Mineral, Vegetable about the gas station attendant in AZ dreading a storm that would mess up her weekend plans and the server in VA looking forward to it for the health of the plants. I think I have more VA in me than AZ. I'm also keeping half an eye on the clock to try to swing in exactly at 7:30 to see if the city next door's camps still have space available for us immigrants. The odds aren't good, but I am comforted that I got an immediate response back from a scout organizer about taking early sign ups for day camps. Summer fun will be had either way. Plus the second book (I binge-read the first) has arrived and I am resolved to savor it. I have an elaborate plan to read a page per to do list item checked off and I less half believe, like Odysseus strapped to the mast, that I will be able to see this agreement with myself through to the end without succumbing to the siren song of cliffhangers and crashing into the rocks of "unproductivity."
3/6 spontaneous wake ups and sleep meditations on youtube
Stressful day yesterday and I went to sleep swimming in the worked up energy of a much-delayed bike ride to dance music plus general irritation said bike ride had not helped me shed. But thankfully after an hour or two of racing thoughts, I queued up a youtube sleep meditation (yes, yes, I know light in the eyes, extra social media, I am tertially glad I am not so strict with my resolves that this option was forbidden). Drifted off, and woke up at 5 without an alarm ready to try for a better day.
3/7 (modest) weight loss and "regrets" rsvp alibi's
I think I am pretty close to my body's "set point" for this particular age and supplement intake level, but I did muddle through the past 2 months feeling like "the hatches" should be slightly more battened and less muffiny than they were but all manner of sugar/carb cutting seemed to move things in the wrong direction. This week brought a tremendous increase in the volume of workouts my trainer put on my plan which got me moving more and robbed me precious snacking time. Down 1.3 lbs in a week and feeling sleek! I love it when the data moves in the direction you expect it to and the sense of control over your destiny that imparts. I've also been semi-dreading the kid's birthday party moguls on what would otherwise been the corduroy slopes of flexible weekend slopes. I'm holding off on rsvp'ing one until we see how disruptive to workout/adventure scheduling the upcoming one is. So when parents mentioned a third one that was when we were squarely out of the state and possibly country, I couldn't resist immediately sending some emoji regrets. Here's to hoping they don't reschedule it solely to accommodate us!
3/8 Oakley's, chipotle seasoning
I decided not to grab the gloves and bandana from the glove box before embarking on a 2 hour bike and regretted it for more than half the ride until the sun was fully up and thawing my blue claws back into effective breaking devices while I continued to sniffle against gravity growing amount of snot in the purgatory of my respiratory cavities. But one area that was blissfully un-insulted on this dawn ride? My eyes. I had the foresight to grab my Oakley Cliffdens, a birthday gift from hubby who himself prefers Temu knock offs that are almost single use disposable in their workmanship. Clearly, hubby has had to suspend some of his most deeply held consumer opinions to make this partnership work. But there I am, careening by at a blistering 12.4 mph (not that fast for true cyclists) with my round bronzy plastic frames and madcap grin making me look like I would be equally at home on a steampunk dirigible. When I'm not helmeted, they double as a wonderful tiara to crown my mom "uniform." And then to get back from said 2 hour cold plunge and find hubby game to fry up some eggs and brussels sprouts for second breakfast which I season with smoky chipotle and crunchy Malden salt. Heaven. I should probably put "hubby" as another joy-sparking gratitude item, but I am sure at this point, it would be a many times over duplicate from previous day's entries.
3/9 CVS digital photo printing and social media/commercial irony.
3/10 Extra credit
Many homeschool days, it takes all my ingenuity to keep the planned lesson engaging. I'm cutting up the worksheet and hiding it in plastic eggs; we are rolling dice and calling on various plushy avatars to answer the question. But today was unusual. Daughter plowed through a week's worth of handwriting lessons in one sitting to get through the final pages of the workbook. She went on to spontaneously embark on a project to write and distribute thank you notes (complete with our recycled cardstock stationery-- purchased under the aspirational aegis of following with Santa and disbursed relatives mailing us gifts). Leaving me idle time to write this entry, order groceries, finish a Duolingo Spanish lesson, and plan a Girl Scout meeting. Double extra credit!
3/11 Eggs, zero gravity Guinness
We have been in short supply of eggs for several weeks with bird flu. Every week, I add some Happy Egg Co pasture raised "heirloom" to the cart and every week, Kamryn refunds them. Not this week. Nor the 2 pack of non-alcoholic Guinness. And hubby, who I sent to pick up on his lunch run even found a bonus dozen of eggs in the store. What kitchen abundance!
3/12 Helpful answers- youtube, dreams
I went to sleep muddling through a space-themed snack for the scouts and dreamt of to-scale(ish) pizza toppings- capers, olives, cherry tomatoes, pineapple rings, pepperoni, Jupiter? Neptune? So square that away as 60% sorted. I logged into my email to find a youtube comment I had made requesting what type of fermented sweetener (amazake) she had mentioned, so add that to the shopping list.
3/13 Mostly water-tight roof
1" of rain fell in 3 hours last night. I was shaken from a nightmare about paying a very large bill to attorneys? consultants? They had delivered it in a complimentary curio cabinet, which gives one a sense for the magnitude of the invoice. As hubby got up to check for leaks, I rolled over and drifted back off remembering a January day when he asked me to rock climbing belay him, hammer in hand, to reinforce our roof's ridgelines before another storm. Yesterday, my daughter had worried that if our 140 year and as many feet tall star pine were to fall, we would be homeless. I'm grateful that in both of those scenarios, at least for now, we have enough squirrelled away to address those sorts of problems.
3/14 Music for breakfast book club
After a disastrous piano lesson with Ms. April, daughter and I settled into a new arrangement that if she wanted a meal/snack fully prepped and delivered by me to her screen time rapture, she would first need to play through her piano assignment once. This has been going on for a week and a half pretty steadily. How satisfying it has been to hear what was first a jumble of arrhythmic off notes slowly organize over a week of snacks into an almost fully swinging 3 count waltz. She even spontaneously played a snack-free half hour concert to my captive stationary biking audience. Some of this is the joy of hearing someone tackle something hard and progress, some of this is the joy of watching her joy in the activity grow alongside her mastery. I see the T-I-double-guh-err of playfulness prowling beneath the Tiger Mom stern parenting facade now. After waltzing around the kitchen reheating pastries, I cracked open Gay's Book of Delights (a delight in itself). In the space of 3 petite pages, he reminisces about two of my favorite books from equally diverse genres (Pattern Language - architectural philosophy and Ulysses - cryptic fanfiction). Suddenly the gap between the lived experience of a Gen X black gay man and a Millennial white cis housewife collapse into oneness in a way that reminds me of my husband explaining worm holes by drawing two points on an index card and folding this physical manifestation of space-time, so they can overlap... Maybe I just admire Joyce's chutzpah to fill a chapter with labyrinthine run-on sentences?
3/15 +2.4 mph
Waiting for enough morning light to determine the rain has truly stopped, topping my bike tires back up to 100 psi. Driving down to the beach without a mapping app to sanity check me, my bike sprawled across the trunk and flattened back seat. Remember the snot bandana and magic possum gloves this time, good-good. Push off to 80 bpm music which seems deceptively down tempo. Muddy sand sprayed all over from poorly-judged puddle-fording. Sure, the water bottle bracket falls apart 5 miles in and a brief deliberation about whether to stay for the next 2 hours with a dramatically scaled back hydration and fuel strategy. Channel Goggins and do. Surprisingly few svelt spandex cyclists passing me this weekend. Making good time, improvising a bit more distance to fulfill the time requirement. Fantasizing about the bike being a telepathic dragon in the YA page turner I'm reading through, this dragon cross-examining all my cruelest, least charitable self-criticisms. Back to "5prkjoi" 33 miles later with a clearer outlook, and best of all, a 2.4 mph improvement in my pace from last week. I am now fast enough to clear race cutoffs.
I've been trying to buy the premo milk- the 6% organic, sometimes-pasture raised cows on regenerative farm brand. It comes with a cream plug on top. Sometimes the cream pours off inconveniently-- a glob into a baking project or kiddo's cereal which will more than likely be eaten around, abandoned and slurped up by the dog. But this morning, it plunked into the top of my coffee and as I savor it, I am "bulletproof" for this morning's long run.
3/17 Playing with food
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
3/18 Abbreviated to do lists
Last night, I knocked what was a 2 column-single-spaced daily to list down to half its former size. Just the essentials with clear next steps. Hopefully I'll be able to complete at least 2/3 of it today. I still have a full plate, but life feels less hectic.
3/19 "Ahora" and candlelight timers
One of the delights of learning a new language is the structures that give you a peek into a slightly different way of seeing the world. Several I've come across from Spanish-- "dedica" literally dedicate and an acceptable way to ask what someone does for their work, yet it seems so elevated. The bricklayers who say they are building a cathedral rather than a wall were probably Spanish. "Ahora" literally "this hour" but used to mean "now" offers a little more wiggle room in how finely we slice our time. Another delight, rather than working through a laundry list of chores, I have been burning one of my intermediate candlemaking project tea lights with the intention of tidying what most bothers me. I thought it would be like the beeswax wrapped candle they say lovers chaperones used to measure a fixed hour of courtship. The way is lit and there is a discrete end to a class of tasks which is infinite.
3/20 Spring, family movie nights, coffee chats with friends
Today is vernal equinox. Time to tithe, maybe do a bit of spring cleaning. Huzzah to fresh starts! Every few days in my media diet, I come across an exhortation for families to eat meals together, away from screens. As I age, my reaction has started to mellow from frustration into resignation. Even with liberal snacks, kid and I are hungry around what was the "Simpsons" hour of my childhood, 5PM (this daily milestone might be signaling inability to eat together is an epigenetic problem...). Hubby is out slaying corporate dragons then battling a 40 minute commute. If he's back 2 hours after we've eaten, we are lucky and he has typically fortified himself with a 2000 calorie cafeteria lunch, so no sense going out of our way to wait or keep something warm for him. I have failed my housewifely duties. But this isn't a journal about despair. Every couple of weeks, we land upon a movie the whole family is excited to watch/re-watch. Usually because one or more of us is subversively under/overage to enjoy the content. Inside Out, Interstellar, last night: Jurassic Park. We pop a huge bowl of dessert popcorn and watch it together all the way up to bedtime and then pray none of us have nightmares. It may not be a proper and wholesome as screen free dinner, but it brings us together. For the past several days, I've been looking forward to a much mentioned but often rescheduled meet up with a close friend (do they still qualify if you hardly ever hang?). Today is the day, she chose my favorite coffee shop. I could use an extra caffeine shot to put some spring in my step after fitful sleep about GMO run amok. This is going to be wonderful.
I've written about my nepenthes pitcher plants before, how I almost killed them getting to know what conditions they thrived in. They dropped all their pitchers and shriveled up. But now it is delightful a year + later to see that they're flourishing, snaking their roots down into the shrimp tank and both have popped up a little pup clone in their understory. A win for patience and consistency.
3/22 New Route
I have been spinning the same long bike route for several weekends, hoping to control the variables which might account for different speed and better determine if I am in fact getting faster. I'm now fast enough that this route hits a dead end about 10 minutes before I should be turning around and heading back and if I can avoid repeating scenery, in capricious loops, I am all in favor of that. I did a bit of exploration at a fork in the road midway through the route and found it linked up to a much longer bike path I can favor in the future. Huzzah for making progress and covering (sort of new) territory! Also, my water bottle did not fall apart in my hands 20 minutes into the ride, nor did I coat my bike and britches in sandy mud this week, so w00t for past crises not repeated. Also, I fueled up at my favorite local coffee shop with my favorite sugary beverage and a bag of freshly ground beans before rolling out, so I am feeling super self-cared for.
3/23 Zagara
The house smells like the pound of fresh ground coffee I picked up, but outside is redolent with citrus blossoms. The meyer pot lemon (second lemon from same MIL, possibly a memory fail or an emphatic belief that every socal house should have a lemon tree). Tinged with my memory of the cheeky review of a friend's deodorant company I crafted yesterday and how I can now drop with confidence on the bike because I'll leave a subtle cloud of citrus grove scent in my wake.
3/24 EZ pitch tents, radical disclosure and dedicated recovery days
Like a good worker Ant, I hustled through both my weekend workouts on Saturday so I could go full Grasshopper on Sunday, no must do list, no regrets! Binge reading a page turner. Dropping in on a Quaker meeting that was refreshingly candid in sharing its financial situation (and investment strategy, leaving the breadcrumbs for a socially responsible index fund that didn't have a massive expense ratio option for personal investment). And when the kid said she wanted a tent to squirrel away in and revisit her Think Outside monthly subscription box curriculum, it was the work of a minute to haul out the ancient (16? year old) REI halfdome and pop it up barefoot in the front yard. To hang on a comfy camp chair on the porch continuing to binge read over the hushed comments about That Epic House whispered by passersby. And when the sun started to throw orangey red shadows and hubby was asleep with his feet thrown over the arms of the chair and a half, beat from a day of making up snorkeling challenges for the pool astronaut turned camper, it was the work of 5 minutes to take the tent down, roll it up, and slide it into its generously sized stuff sack.
3/25 novelty DOMS
When you've been following the same strength diet for a while and you add a new work out to the mix that seems more silly than challenging yet find the next morning that muscles you didn't even know you had are a little hurt so good sore and it seems like your waistline shed 2 inches of ballast overnight.
I would be sedentary if I weren't so geriatric about my shoes. The same make, the same size and pray that the manufacturer has not changed the molds and my fitted orthotics will slide in without whittling. Maybe splash out with a different color, to the extent of toggling through the options and picking the one on sale if it doesn't burn your retinas. Done. I had been experimenting with buying preowned spec after carefully scrutinizing the soles to try to determine how much mileage they had on them and how unevenly it had accrued to keep some material out of the landfill. But the training plan has ramped up, the consequences of overuse injuries before race day have as well. Here is to a completely fresh off the factory line reboot. I am looking forward another 300-500 miles of less creaky hips, knees and shins as the heel cup starts to break down in the same predictable way... The sisterhood message boards got on the topic of flat whites this morning, flooding me with nostalgia about our honeymoon and unusually popular coffee preparation than got me past the jet lag. This is now my go-to when I am tempted by sugary fancy drinks back home but don't feel I can justify the empty calories. Trade them for full sweet memories of diving amazing reefs, kangaroo sanctuaries, bin chickens, and delightfully amiable can-do accents and attitudes.
3/27 sympathetic ears and school choice
Much of Tuesday evening was spent drafting a request our county school board allow our daughter's charter school to continue operating in our home city. The city school board had declined our school's request with an understandably chilly reception at a meeting whose agenda was largely consumed with public comment about a layoff of its own teaching staff due to declining enrollment. So it was with joy that I viewed the interview with our county trustee, "esq." product of Cuban immigrants, whose most troubling concern at the time of filming was that parents weren't aware of their education options. Now I wait with pop rocks crackling in my heart for an update about how the meeting next week went.
3/28 resilient dollar store seeds...
A month ago today I marveled at the germination rate of dollar store seeds. They grew so vigorously I worried about being able to support them all in such a small pot. I moved them poolside to take advantage of unfiltered sun... and within a day, they were scorched bleach blond and crispy. I brought them back inside to regroup. It looks like a manageable number (3) are still going for it.
3/29 Gold
I've checked out the Gafori translation of Rumi's poems. Woven through the work so far are references to gold, his stand-in color for profound love. How misguided was Jose Arcadio Buendia, looking for the philosopher's stone?
3/30 Friends, campfire
A belated equinox bonfire, an early birthday party, one of the few remaining refuges we can bring the kid to, and hang out in the company of agreeable parents with minimal helicoptering. We have earned it through years of volunteering together at the co-op preschool and then maintaining it through a group chat and sporadic last minute playdates. They scamper between the oversized trampoline, the chickens, the bomb-proof puppy, the cats. S'mores for dessert. We disburse in a cloud of sugar and campfire.
3/31 Nutella kisses
Kid's morning routine is to have a flaky biscuit out of a pop can with Nutella. The remainder on the knife I use to stir creatine into my morning coffee is the perfect dash of sweet without quite "counting" as a sugary treat.
4/1 April Foolishness, projector lamps and Amazon purchase history
It is the first day of April and I am looking forward to foolishness. I kicked the festivities off with translating my to do list into tarea de espanol! Last night, we had quorum to watch a movie together as a family. At a suspenseful point, "pop" and the screen goes black while the dialog plays on. "Another projector bulb blew out?! Isn't that the third we've had to replace?! No, kiddo, we can't watch the movie now, we have to wait to replace the bulb-if we choose to replace it-I'm trying to convince mommy to-" Hubby has been angling to festoon the walls with more dedicated screens at every opportunity. "... We could watch right now upstairs on the TV [atrocity] in your office [nee commandeered home school study room]?" Perhaps this is one of [some of?] those handful of differences of opinion they say couples will never be able to reconcile and just have to carefully step around. He works in the computer industry, it pays our bills. But a pixelated fireplace connotes so much that is orthogonal to what I hope our family's values are. Creative play with tangible toys, conversation, cozy reading nooks... A dreaded few clicks further from old money and closer to declassee. I know we are trying to cut back on the players in big commerce oligarchy who should probably get a bit more scrutiny from the antitrust division of DoJ, or at least pay a meaningful amount of tax on their hoarde. But sometimes, oftentimes, the convenience of almost all transactions in one place trumps ethics. "You're right, my Amazon purchase history has 3 projector lamp transactions in 2017..." I am doing the math, almost 8 years of service out of a bulb that costs $35 to replace in the space of 1.5 business days. Awesome.
4/2 Burpees with dogs
I discovered today that the body positioning to accomplish a burpee at my age is proximate enough to the "stink bug" of "let's play!" to dogs that I was only able to accomplish two reps before I was interrupted for a dog waltz by my 13 year old tail-wagging familiar.
My daughter picked a Young Cultivator merit badge yesterday and threw herself into it with gusto, setting up a "Plant Market" at the end of the driveway and marketing her wares to passersby. Memories of my childhood selling lemonade in a cul de sac without a thought of what to charge or how to make change. This is a unicorn moment for the Anxious Generation. A chance to talk to neighbors, learn to sell (a trait which I hope is learnable rather than an inherited allergy), sit in the sun away from the dopamine coma of screens. "I want to open my shop tomorrow as soon as I get home from school!"
I often read several books concurrently. Now Ross, the daily delighter is delighting in his garden, like Nancy Goodwin in Montrose. He delights in bindweed, my equivalent would be morning glory. Overnight, it grows several feet and chokes my coddled orchard saplings. This is not a delight, but in the lazy days when I can meander through the garden with gloves, snips and a bucket I am so satisfied. I noticed eating lunch intentionally (screen free and outside) that the akebia I had given up hope on has a lone flower. I've never seen it blossom before, and it seems to have prevailed despite its too-small, seriously sun-baked pot and a lot of ants farming scale aphids!
4/5 ridiculous sport costumes
Would I pick this out for myself with my "greyge" uniform color palette? Heck no, but somehow on a group ride I am less self conscious in this than street clothes....
4/6 NEAT
As someone who often jokes about being velcro'ed to the couch, I did not think I was particularly accomplished at Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) or burning calories from fidgeting. But then I tried to chillax and watch a 2 hour movie and found myself pausing every 30 minutes or so to move around to relieve lower back stiffness and general restlessness. I still haven't finished it. Was the back pain delightful? No... but there is hope that my fried attention span and aging body come with an upside of keeping a body in motion.
4/7 Sober-versery
I had one brief lapse of a few polite participatory fingers of red that my TCT backpacking buddies packed in to our kick-off dinner and paid for it with restless sleep and a massive hangover at the trailhead. But otherwise, hubby and I have not drunk anything harder than a non-alcoholic beer (which they still card me for, another ironic delight) for the last 365 days. w00t. Outside of a few rough days where it would have been nice to temporarily take the edge off, we have been reaping the benefits of better sleep, more stable moods, and fewer empty calories piling up at the midriff.
4/8 Math on a Tuesday?!
Homeschoolers come in a lot of different stripes and go about it in varied ways, but it seems our common bond is that we want kids to love to learn. So it is delightful to drag myself out of bed before 6 on a Tuesday. My kid is a few hours way from being dropped off at the learning center to focus on science and history and the social study of making friends and influencing people outside of her immediate family. She is insisting we do Math first thing today. If that isn't a clear indication of a love of learning, I'm not sure what is.
4/9 Feral cat caresses
Nearly every morning it is the same. Mama cat and "baby" who we now think is squarely in her second year, racing from their positions peering in our back porch windows to pace excitedly for the food deposit in the mortar underneath hubby's truck. As the garage door rises, revealing their excited toes all the way up to their exclamation mark tails. More reserved Mama cat clearly had some traumatic times and her body is still keeping score as she hisses and smacks Baby every time she excitedly comes in too close for a rub. She can't have been too forceful because Baby came back to help her with a subsequent litter which was our first clue that baby was probably a female we should also try to trap and spay. Baby can't have great memory because she tries again every morning. They say having one stable adult influence in a kid's life is tremendously protective. I wonder if it works across species as I obligingly pet her arching back and even let her hazard a shoulder crash into my calf.
4/10 I can do it myself!
"Don't do anything for your kid that they can do for themselves!" Seems a bit harsh if practiced rigidly, but whoever first came up with that aphorism was onto something. I can pick up the clothes, make the snacks, littering resentful energy in my wake. Or I can delightedly coach as my kid assembles coffee and breakfast for her Grand Dude while doing mental math of 60-(current time) to figure out how many more minutes before she's 'allowed' to wake him up.
4/11 Thunderstorm experience in Atlanta. Granddad's really good griddle cakes and grilled cheese.
4/12 Daughter's fellow camper is also a Minecraft enthusiast and is going to school in the same city as I went to elementary school.
4/13 Warm water, great diving visibility and gloves are actually discouraged not required! We found a stack of weights at the bottom of the anchor mooring to offset my buoyancy problems. The hotel has a friendly donkey that comes all the way onto the covered patio looking for handouts. My daughter had a few small sips of diluted Dayquil from the reception first aid kit and was ready to conquer the day without a problem.
4/14 We saw a great dive site that wasn't even listed on the island dive site map (Rockstar)
4/15 It was rainy the day husband felt too sick to dive, a perfect day to veg out without FOMO.
4/16 Daughter's clothes weren't lost by the camp counselors and now she had a raincoat just in time for rainy day #2.
4/17 Hooray, Jens can dive again! And dive we did, through a neat cave (Dolphin's Den).
4/18 Daughter went out in the open water on the reef in her floaty scuba gear for the first time. She was so calm and had so much fun. Her instructor was able to find her a flounder and a trumpet fish without even seeming to hunt.
4/19 Glad our itinerary was intentionally broken up over 2 days because the airport delays some of the other campers were facing seemed brutal.
4/20 House-sitting in-laws surprised us with a wonderfully repaired door and have started rebuilding our railing posts!
4/21 Panda the cat spotted sleeping by the dining room window, no need to worry she is hurt or missing.
4/22 Earth day! Creative book formatting- the reason I loved House of Leaves and now this playful commingling of blackness and suffering in the Book of Delights this morning.
4/23 Eating the frog at dawn. I followed the plan dispassionate Past Me laid out of running 30 minutes before hubby left for work. It wasn't easy, first persuading myself to put on workout clothes to shoes. Then the excuse of prepping kid breakfast squared away. Then the siren song of a yard cat perched on the fence waiting for breakfast drawing me out. Here I am, trotting through the neighborhood, listening to whatever random self-help blogger the algorithm thought I'd like. I feel I earned this morning coffee and won't have that difficult-to-fit item dragging down my do's for the rest of the day.
4/24 Beanbag chairs. So cozy and reminiscent of my mis-spent youth. I can almost convince myself that their lower than average height gets me ground-adjacent, which Kelly Starett and the mobility gurus would approve of. Note to self I should top all the bags in the house up with peanuts on a semi-annual basis. Even delightful stuff owns you and spins off its own stream of silent to-dos.
4/25 Zinnias. I regret initially not favoring flowers in the garden, believing they came at the expense of edibles. It turns out they are attention magnets that draw you out to ultimately realize there are peas to harvest or a distressed seedling to water a bit more while you're there. My regret evolved to now regret emphasizing white flowers, thinking their color would never clash and I wouldn't need to worry about planting impressionistic drifts of complementary colors. But some random seeds I had scattered sprouted into this double firework of pink and golden flowers. Let's see an all white zinnia do that! And thank you, ChatGPT for helping me figure out what this mystery plant was while my Plant ID app was down for maintenance.
4/26 Run intermission. My first HIM rodeo, I was so conscientious about executing on the workouts to the letter. Now I am looking for little ways to infuse a bit more delight into them. Instead of doing a full 1:15 run, I ran about 50 to my favorite coffee shop, stopped to sip a flat white and joke with another patron about my hat name tag, and then cruised home.
4/27 Stationary bike accoutrement - putting off the group weekend ride because of a storm. Gratified it did start pouring right at rally time. But now I'm looking at 3:15 hours on a stationary bike. Thank goodness for good podcasts, petroleum jelly, beet chips, a smarter bike trainer (with depressingly declining power metrics), adjusted aerobars, a aerobottle that is now in easy reach, and a fan. I am sure I would not have made it without all these creature comforts.
4/28 Pair of Bluebirds glimpsed in the understory of the bathroom window. These are not common around here and I dread they may not adequately avoid the feral cats, but how wonderful if they are able to pair up and fledge some chicks this spring. I love that our house is so old and our landscaping so laissez faire that several of our windows are peepholes into wildlife sanctuaries.
4/29 A farmgirl quote of the day that really resonates. I'm not sure how Wanda became such a trove of inspirational quotes, but I am so grateful to her for sharing and for every item on her post today.
4/30 Fairy Godmother. Once in a while, I get in an overwhelmed, unmotivated rut. Luckily, I have a semi-habit of journaling coming off of Julie Cameron's "Daily Pages" prescription in The Artist's Way. Many days, this is a 3 page (or 75% of a single printer page front+back sides folded in half) brain dump of all the thoughts rattling around up there, as fast as I can. Some days, it is a caffeine-spurred list of notes/epiphanies from podcasts that seem profound. On down days, sometimes my "fairy godmother" alter ego makes an entrance and it is a series of orders/suggestions of tasks to pause and do and then return for more instructions. Thanks to Fairy G yesterday, the kitchen is no longer distractingly cluttered, the robo vacuum explored the terra incognita that was the dog fur drifted living room, my kid took a bath including a long overdue thorough shampoo, and I have permission to "did not finish" and return a library book that is beautifully written on a heartbreaking topic (colonization of the southern Americas). She even made me read aloud the initial brain dump before her intervention into a voice recording app and play it back so I could appreciate how over the top melodramatic and self-critical I sounded. Not quite out of The Rut but already starting today with a bit more of a bounce in my step.
5/1: Farmer's markets. We had fallen out of the habit of going on Wednesday, but after reflecting on how much packaging grocery produce came wrapped in and that badge winding to a close, I insisted yesterday. I think a trick to getting the Good Stuff is to find the long line and wait in it. Tomato guy always has a cue snaking out into the commons and always has delicious, flavorful tomatoes year round based on some magical climate alchemy in Carlsbad. You may think this line waiting is an inconvenient waste of time (and it might be if the kid insists on waiting in the car and disrespectfully honking the horn in a residential area), but then you wouldn't hear the exchange of recipes for fava beans and remind yourself to plant some next winter. The mushroom guy might charge $1 more for his mix, but he can tell you in detail what each of the mushrooms in it are and they are in stock while they are sold out at the grocery store. I am remembering a section of a Youtube travelogue interview with a family living in Cuba, where refrigerators are precious. Thank goodness mom got one from the in-laws when she had her first baby. You buy food there from the market (meat) minutes before you cook it. Leftovers? There are none.
5/2: Pool locust. Not to derive too much glee from something else's downfall, but I had been watching the leaves of the most serendipitously placed sunflower get gnawed away in large gulps. This sunflower was growing up through a crack in the pavement in zone 0, right at the base of the stairs. So when I saw a huge capsized grasshopper nearing the end in the pool a few feet away, a few days later, I was hopeful on behalf of the beleaguered sunflower.
5/3: Tim Marshall Geography books, good terms with adult brothers. I have checked a book out of the library which drills into the topography and cultural history of a selection of countries to explain why and where they have gotten into conflicts. It is a lot to take in, but I wish this book had been around for context when we got into all these wars in the middle east! My sis in law just emailed an update about the nieces' Christmas present and we got to riffing about starting a 8 and under dungeons and dragons group. Sometimes I wonder if my kid would be happier with siblings, but then I comfort myself by reminding myself that it isn't guaranteed that one will stay on good terms with those siblings as adults and at least she has some great cousins to visit with.
5/4: Lazy Sunday rabbit trails. The grandparents are here, upgrading our front porch and reveling in their grand daughter's company. The other grandparents seem to have safely arrived from their peregrinations. I paid the iron price yesterday of 4.5 hours of exercise so now all that remains is a short dip in the pool. So I can have a leisurely coffee and pursue the rabbit trails of an interesting vocabulary word in the Ross Gay gratitude essay on offer today, leading me to look up the venue he is describing, and look up the origin story of the artist the venue is venerating. To call this a "rabbit trail" is reminding me of the delight of seeing intrepid young bunnies hopping across the parking lot as gymnastics class let out last Thursday... and the secondary delight of knowing they and their appetites are miles away from my fenced in vegetable gardens.
5/5: Curb appeal: new pillars, renovated historic door (with analog doorbell), and stained glass light. Contractor in-laws hung out for a day and a half making headway on the front door upgrades. This was one of the ornate things that I dreaded having to farm out to unknown carpenters if the in-laws were too busy or incapacitated to work. I also got a tutorial that they had "dry rotted" because the wood sat on cement which can wick water into the wood and cause it to deteriorate. The prevention is to leave a gap between cement and wood and/or use pressure-treated wood with creosote on external wood that is in contact with the ground or concrete. Here I was, worried we had an un-addressed termite problem! Now we just need to let the wood dry out to be able to paint it.
5/6: Architectural delights. Gay is rhapsodizing the carport in his essay today. I love the architectural observations in the book Pattern Language, but suspect that I have already chosen that as a topic for gratitude. I love the quiet step nook under rampant lantana which invites passersby to camp. At first, I feel that "no loitering" tinge mentioned in other Gay essays about being called a loiterer possibly because of his skin color when he was in fact a frequent patron of the other business (a cafe) at the top of the stairs. In this case, driving home from dropping my kid at school, someone was camped there with a bike leaned against the side of the retaining wall. I dreaded maybe a request for money when I am alone and prone to not defending great social boundaries once one has literally breached my perimeter. But as no interaction with the lounging cyclist was sought, I am delighted that she had a quiet nook, somewhat protected from any misty drizzle that might befall her to collect herself whatever the next adventure of the day would be. Maybe I should wedge a little lending library or a free produce stand in there...
5/7: Coconut orchid (souvenir from a trip to Hawaii) is blooming again. When I return home and open the back door, I am greeted with a whiff a sunscreen smell.
5/8: Serendipity. I found the henhouse's word of the day from a few days back in the book I was reading today! My climbing buddy had a discussion about the exact same marital tension with his spouse as cost me 3+ hours of lost sleep *and* invited kiddo and I to a flash mob at their pool which solved the "she is getting an awful lot of screen time..." side concern. A mom I was working a volunteer shift with has a super old house too and had a tip for where to find contractors. The universe feels like it is conspiring to make my problems easier today.
5/9: Housework help. I remember Rajiv in a Youtube pep talk exhorting us to be observant guests in order to be able to help with more alacrity. My life feels like it has turned into a career of volunteering lately- Scouts leadership, charter parent group, master gardeners. And what a relief, to fall into bed at 8PM so exhausted I am oblivious to husband running our kid through her bedtime routine and wake up with his having done two loads of laundry and even tried to protect my cheap cotton cardigan from the dryer by laying it flat to air dry. Also, the delight of poking my head out the front door in the morning to check for packages and noticing for the second day in a row, the neighbor's cat is holding court on a porch camping chair. Also, dragging myself out of bed for a dawn run before the sun heats things up insufferably and finding a podcast (Paul Hawkin's new book about Carbon) at the very top of my suggestion feed and the perfect length to keep me enthralled for the full 1.25 hours. Awesome.
5/10: Joyride. First weekend in several which was not ominously overcast. I get up at dawn, drive to the boat launch and bike inland. First chilly and through a misty cloud, but vastly preferable to facing the brick wall in my bike trainer. The rain has superbloomed the mustard into yellow flowers. I smell honeysuckle out. The ducks are paired off on their dates. Bunnies waver on the shoulder. An off leash dog appears on the horizon which I infer from context is actually a coyote. I yip a little to let him know I'm inbound (he was probably already well aware) and he disappears into the brackish marsh of upper back bay which at this hour and tide level looks like a big field, a "heath" as I imagine the English countryside (probably inaccurately).
5/11: Endings/beginnings and the celebration thereof. This was the last chapter of The Book of Delights, ending on Ross's 43 birthday. As he delighted in birthday cards and coffee, so did I-- quaffing coffee, relieved to have cleared my dawn workouts for the week, enjoying a lazy mother's day. My mom sent *me* a card! Somehow mama hen also knew/anticipated my forum comment about planting seed paper and sent me a 41 birthday card which arrived early on seed paper. I will plant it and hopefully sprout something. 42 is a great number too, like Douglas Adam's books, will I know the answer to the ultimate question of life this time next year? I love the smell of old books and it seems like it is only cultivated from those that are shared-- library or thrifted copies like Ross's.
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